It is known in the art of raising animals to provide a building enclosing the animals and having a gutter system for collecting waste from the animals. Prior art gutter systems take a variety of forms, but generally use a waste-permeable floor for supporting the animal and a gutter located beneath the floor to carry the waste to a central area for disposition.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,353,328 (Steidinger) shows a gutter system for a swine building which includes a plurality of pre-cast concrete gutters having farrowing crates mounted above the gutters. This system employs a single, wide gutter at one end of a farrowing crate and a single, narrow gutter at the opposite end of the farrowing crate. Adjacent rows of gutters are connected by pre-cast concrete walkways which rest on top of the gutter sections.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,224,414 (Conover), 3,584,603 (Rutherford); and 4,175,515 (Bradley) teach gutter systems for farm animals wherein a gutter is covered by a mesh for allowing waste material to fall through the mesh and into the gutter.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,183,324 (Nobbe) and 4,217,859 (Herring) show slotted floors which allow waste materials to fall into a gutter.
German Pat. No. 283,574 (Strache) shows a gutter section having a plurality of parallel channels. A gutter section may provide support for a series of spaced planks which serve as the floor of a building, or a gutter section may be arranged facing a similar section to provide a plurality of cylindrical pipe-like channels.